NY and the myths about American unemployment
The conventional wisdom right now is that the economy stinks and a lot of people are throwing around a lot of big ideas about how to fix it — particularly the persistent stuck-in-the-mud reality of high unemployment.
Currently about 9.1% of Americans can’t find jobs, a high enough number that it’s driving the political and cultural debate both in Washington and in Albany (and in state capitals around the US).
But behind that big takeaway number is a lot of complexity that explodes some of the myths about our current economic struggles.
For one thing, as this map from The Atlantic illustrates, unemployment is incredibly uneven around the country. There are pockets of real malaise, with unemployment hitting between 14% and 25% of the workforce.
That’s devastating — the kind of thing that can tip whole communities into Depression-era level crisis.
But there are also huge swaths of the country where the situation is normal verging on the downright prosperous.
Another interesting wrinkle here is that some of the states that are suffering the most are parts of the US that were once touted as libertarian, union-free economic boom zones.
But now, “new frontier” states like Arizona, California, Florida, and Nevada appear mired in the deepest slough of the recession, and six of the ten states with highest unemployment in the country are in the South.
This from the New York Times:
The reordering of the nation’s economic fortunes can be seen in the Brookings analysis, which found that many auto-producing metropolitan areas in the Great Lakes states are seeing modest gains in manufacturing that are helping them recover from their deep slump, while Sun Belt and Western states with sharp drops in home values are still suffering.
The areas that have been hurt the least since the recession, the study said, rely on government, education or energy production. Places that were less buoyed by the housing bubble were less harmed when it burst.
The North Country has generally ridden the upside of this trend, with much of the region faring better than the US as a whole. Glens Falls has an unemployment rate a third lower than the national average.
And Hamilton County, with an unemployment rate in August of 4.7%, looks downright robust. (Only St. Lawrence County with 9.7% runs above the national average.)
What does all this mean? Only that America is a big, complex country with a massive, complicated economy. For all the very real pain out there, this is a complicated story.
For a more human read of how all these numbers play out, check out Nora Flaherty’s story from last week. And chime in below. Are you in one of the prosperous pockets? Or are you still struggling to find your next paycheck?
Hamilton County, a great place to live, has a population of approximately 5,400. That’s roughly the combined student population of SUNY Potsdam and Clarkson. But it’s a little hard to extrapolate Hamilton county’s numbers.
And those Brookings Institute eggsperts should be smart enough to know that the 9.1% unemployment figure is a myth derived from fudging the numbers.
If the same calculations were used as when Obama took office, it would be more accurate to say 11% and if you count underemployed, more like 17%.
So here in the Adirondacks we are no worse off than the rest of the country and actually better than some parts? What gives? I,ve been hearing for years that the APA was the cause of all this economic despair in the Dacs. Guess I was wrong. I’ll bet once the APA give a permit for that big project over in Tupper Lake unemployment will drop to 0 and we’ll be booming like we’ve never seen before.
I read recently that there are 4 million job vacancies in the US (400,000 in health care related fields alone).
The problem is that we don’t have folks with the right education to fill the slots.
The unemployment rate for people with a 4 year college degree is about half the national average.
One things these “pockets” of prosperity show us is that we are still a country that has to be on the move to keep everyone working.
True, the Bureau of Labor Statistic (whom we can’t trust unless a conservative is in charge) has changed how unemploymnet is calculated. The change they made, raising from two years to five years the upper limit on how long someone can be listed as having been jobless, actually prevents understating the unemployment rate.
Job vacancy numbers can be misleading. Sometimes a job is listed with the idea of canning someone if someone else comes willing to do more for less.
If you or the government expect total honesty from business, you are dreaming.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics probably does a better job of reporting the worst-case unemployment when a conservative is in office.
The fudging comes in lowering the number of total jobs in the labor market, which is the divisor in the unemployment calculation. Totally arbitrary.
Also, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2.6 mil not counted because they had not looked for work 4 weeks prior to the survey. That’s an additional 1% right there.
I created my own job and stopped worrying about whether I’d get fired a long time ago. I highly recommend it to others to try. It helps if you are smart, optimistic, live very frugally and are happy to work long hours.
After a while you will begin to see how brainwashed you were when you felt like you needed a paycheck at the end of the week. Just make sure you keep some options open. Having several skills and a good support network helps.
The younger fellows that have worked for me over the years have been regularly encouraged to get a marketable hobby. Some have diversified the types of work or trade the can do. Others have become so successful at a fringe hobby that they could leave my employ and make a great and satisfying living on their own. Still others have creatively trimmed the frills and excess costs out of their lives and live happily on quite a lot less. Having an interesting life is worth more than having a steady job.
Now if we only had a single-payer health-care system…
JDM: “The Bureau of Labor Statistics probably does a better job of reporting the worst-case unemployment when a conservative is in office.”
Uh, this claim is based on what, exactly?
Walker: Uh, this claim is based on what, exactly?
Logic.
If they under report for Obama, then they will….
Knucklhead; good advice.
I think though that the other stat that needs to be looked at is the actual unemployment rate that takes into account workers who are out of the labor force due to long term unemployment and those who are working part time. This rate is around 16-18%, reaching depression levels. Remember we changed how we count the unemployed back in the early 80’s to make unemployment seem less than it really is.
Part of unemployment is the inflexibility of our labor market. We have to go to where the jobs are, that means you may have to move or you may have to be retrained.
What is interesting is how we talk about unemployment. I am not a Perry hater, but you know the Texas jobs miracle? 8.4 % unemployment and high poverty does not make a job miracle. If you want a job miracle go to South Dakota, no oil no resource play, and you still have a state with 5% unemployment. North Dakota does not count because of the oil boom.
Texas is not a jobs miracle.
“Now if we only had a single-payer health-care system…”
Absolutely agree. Get health care completely out of the realm of it being a benefit employers are responsible for as well as out of the hands of for profit health insurance companies. If people knew they could get health care without working for someone else, many more individuals would be inclined to work for themselves. Sadly, many people work exclusively for employer provided health care. One way to make US businesses more competitive is to take the shackles of health insurance off their balance sheet. The worst mistake we’ve done in this country is allow this process to continue for decades now purely for the benefit of one industry. That being the insurance industry.
Totally agree.
I think there are several people on this very board who are responsible for small businesses or are in positions that could hire more people; if they did not have to pay the benefit load associated with hiring employees.